Rabbi Haim Eleazar Spira in Marienbad

Marienbad in Czechoslovakia was one of the most elegant spa towns in Central Europe. It is scarcely known that there were a great number of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews among its visitors. From the 1920s onwards, Rabbi Haim Eleazar Spira, the well-known rabbi of Mukachevo, was a regular visitor to the spa town, who was the leader of the largest Hasidic community of Transcarpathia from 1913 until his death, in 1937. The rabbi with a charismatic and confrontational personality, had a great number of followers; many Hassidic Jews and Christians as well visited him seeking advice or healing. He founded a yeshiva in 1922, which also functioned as a state-recognized rabbinical institution. Hans Lampalzer a photographer from Mukachevo, as a real paparazzi, regularly took photos of Eastern European Orthodox rabbis in their typical costumes. He later sold the pictures for good money as a souvenir to the followers of the Hasidic rabbis.